FBI Agent: Kentucky Not Immune to Human Trafficking

An FBI agent in Kentucky says human trafficking is now the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world, and it’s expected to eclipse drug-running in a few years.

Special Agent Michael Brown, who is based in Owensboro, says sex and labor trading are occurring in cities large and small throughout the commonwealth.

In a speech Wednesday to the Bowling Green Noon Rotary Club, Brown said he investigated a case in Henderson in 2014 where two girls were willingly prostituting themselves in order to earn money to buy a car.

"It wasn't going as fast as they thought it would, so they reached out on Facebook and other social media sites, advertising their activity," recalled Brown. "A trafficker named Jathar Williams reached out to them, and within a couple of days, he was prostituting them, taking their money, and threatening them with physical harm if they did not work. He was also preparing them for drug trafficking."

Williams was sentenced to ten years in prison. Brown says the girls went with their trafficker willingly for the promise of a better life, which is common in sex trafficking.

In another case prosecuted in 2012, an Elizabethtown physician and his wife enticed an illegal immigrant from Bolivia to come the U.S. and subjected her to domestic servitude for more than a decade.

Brown says it’s difficult to know the prevalence of human trafficking in Kentucky. The FBI estimates there are about 20 cases a year in the commonwealth, but non-profit groups that work with victims of sex or labor trading put the number much higher.

"Catholic Charities and other non-governmental organizations are not going to do investigations," Brown explained. "They are told stories and that's the information they use."

A candlelight vigil honoring victims of human trafficking will be held in Bowling Green Thursday at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall.

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Kentucky’s hotel industry is being enlisted to help fight human trafficking, a crime that Attorney General Andy Beshear says is occurring in every community.

“Today we are giving traffickers notice that we are fighting back with a strong team who is committed to training thousands of hotel staff on how to help a victim escape and put an end to this crime," Beshear said in a press release.

Beshear announced a new partnership Tuesday that will include a training program called See Something-Say Something-Save a Life. Employees in the hotel industry will learn how to identify and report human trafficking.

When Beth Jacobs was 16 years old, she needed a ride home. She had missed her bus after work again after promising her father she was responsible enough not to make it a habit. She asked a man she thought was a friend to give her a lift. He offered her a drink from his car’s cup holder. She took a sip and woke up in a parking lot hours later.

“And he was like, ‘Baby do you know what I am?’” Jacobs recalled decades later. “He said, ‘I'm a pimp.’ I reached for the door, and he grabbed my hair and he said, ‘I own you now.’”

The pimp told Jacobs if she didn’t cooperate he would kill her and her father. Jacobs believed him. “He had taken me home before, he knew where I lived.”

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Hear Nicole's story about the impact of human trafficking in our region.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear is focusing attention on identifying and prosecuting those who take part in human trafficking. The attorney general joined industry and religious groups in Frankfort on Jan. 11 as part of the national Human Trafficking Awareness Day. The effort is to make people aware that men, women and children across the U.S., including some in Kentucky, are victims of forced sex and forced labor.

From January through October of 2016, the National Human Trafficking Hotline got 261 calls from Kentucky. Of those, 56 cases of sex trafficking and 10 cases of forced labor trafficking were documented. Two cases were a combination of sex and labor trafficking, such as being forced to dance in a strip club and also forced to engage in commercial sex.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear says his office will ramp up efforts in 2017 to combat human trafficking.

With assistance from the attorney general's office, 28 people were arrested this year in Kentucky, accused of forcing others into sex or labor trading. One of the arrests was in Louisville during the week of the Kentucky Derby where a 14-year-old girl was rescued.

Beshear says human trafficking is occurring in every county of the state.